An AI wingman

Hi, it’s Drake in New York. AI is infiltrating everything, even Grindr. But first...Three things you need to know today:• OpenAI will pay Ax [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( [by Drake Bennett]( Hi, it’s Drake in New York. AI is infiltrating everything, even Grindr. But first... Three things you need to know today: • OpenAI will pay [Axel Springer for news]( • App store antitrust [battles aren’t over]( • EU will treat some [gig workers as employees]( ChatLGBTQ One of the challenges of being a modern human is that, unlike the rest of the animal kingdom, our species doesn’t have a standard courtship ritual. Internet dating was supposed to help by connecting and sorting everyone who’s on the market, but there remains the question of what to do when actually confronted with the person who has agreed to meet with you. Perhaps AI can help. Grindr Inc., the world’s largest LGBTQ-focused dating network, plans to announce a partnership Thursday with Ex-human Inc., a provider of generative artificial intelligence tools. “If we don’t do it, someone else will,” said Grindr Chief Executive Officer George Arison. “If you’re not first to market with something in AI, you’re going to miss out.” Ex-human, a startup founded in 2021, makes customizable chatbots. The offerings on the company’s consumer site, [botify.ai](, are heavily weighted toward virtual girlfriends and boyfriends: There’s Geisha, Cinderella, Vampire, Vampiress and Elon Musk. Ex-human’s bots aren’t trying to answer questions or find facts, they’re trying to engage in conversations that feel meaningful and emotionally fulfilling. “ChatGPT is for boring conversations,” said Artem Rodichev, the company’s founder and CEO. Users send 50 million messages a month to Botify AI interlocutors, according to the company. All of those interactions help train Ex-human’s algorithm to better flirt — at least with the self-selected community of people who flirt with chatbots. Under the terms of the new deal, Grindr will incorporate a version of Ex-human’s flirt-bot into its platform, training it over time on Grindr’s own user data. Arison declined to specify what tools that might yield, but one thing he does talk about is a kind of dating assistant. “There’s a concept of something I internally call ‘Grindr wingman,’” he said. The AI might suggest a restaurant to take a date to or select music based on a person’s profile that they might find aphrodisiacal if and when they come up for a drink. Or it might propose a few options for how to respond to incoming messages from prospective matches. “And then there’s a lot more you can do beyond that,” Arison said. Grindr is not the first dating app to experiment with AI. Match Group Inc.’s Tinder is testing similar tools. It now suggests messages in its chat interface and is looking to use generative AI to write profile descriptions. There’s a [slew of startups]( also marketing features to help with romantic small talk. The privacy implications of all of this are straightforward. The data that users of sites like Grindr entrust to the platforms are deeply personal. To address these concerns, Arison said the Ex-human bot will be integrated into Grindr in a way that ensures user data stays with Grindr. “Anyone can have issues,” he said, “but we feel good about our infrastructure, and we do a lot of work to ensure that it’s safe.” Things could still get weird. “We’re going to get to market fast,” Arison said, and as with much in the tech world, the early adopters will be guinea pigs. Arison compared it to Tesla Inc.’s self-driving capability — under pressure from US regulators, Tesla [recalled 2 million cars]( on Wednesday because of issues with that system. “You’re getting something that’s 80% there but not 100% there,” Arison said. Grindr plans to start rolling out some of the AI features in the coming year. —[Drake Bennett](mailto:dbennett35@bloomberg.net), with Natalie Lung The big story A massive cyberattack disabled Ukraine’s top mobile carrier, a reminder of the persistent threat of [escalation in the war with Russia](. Get fully charged Foxconn will invest at least $1 billion more in a [plant it’s building in India]( that will make Apple products. Airbnb will pay €576 million to [settle a tax claim in Italy](. Adobe signaled that AI will take longer than expected to [boost its financial results](. Alibaba lost a senior cloud executive as [uncertainty circles around]( the fate of that business. 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